


- est deus in nobis - there is a god inside us -

by otter



Category: Stargate SG-1
Genre: F/M, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-13
Updated: 2012-04-13
Packaged: 2017-11-03 13:50:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,296
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/382018
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/otter/pseuds/otter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Life, happiness, and almighty gods, or the lack of all three.</p>
            </blockquote>





	- est deus in nobis - there is a god inside us -

He's at a truck stop off I-84, just outside of Boise, and when the girl stops next to his table he doesn't look up. He's trying to decide between the grilled cheese and the cheeseburger, but he definitely wants something with cheese on it. He says, "I'll have coffee, and give me a minute to look at the menu." His voice is a little gravelly; he's had a sore throat for years and years.

The girl doesn't go away. She doesn't drift off to fetch a coffee pot, and she doesn't turn around to take anyone's order. She stands there, and from the corner of his eye, he can see her pale hands twist-twist-twisting around each other. He looks up.

She's looking at the floor mostly, but her eyes flicker up to him, never looking long, like she's trying to look at the sun. He squints at her, and then she says, "My God, I knew it was you," and she sits down across from him. Her hands perch uncertainly at the edge of the table, and she knits her fingers together; she grips herself so hard that her knuckles are wrinkled and white, and her fingernails look almost purple.

He knows her round little face, and her thin lips and her muddy eyes. He stares and stares, and he finally says, "Rachel."

Her smile is blindingly bright, but it burns out quickly. He doesn't mind; the Rachel he remembers was quiet and shy, and she hid behind her straight black hair and never looked anyone in the eyes. He finds it comforting that she doesn't seem to have changed.

"I was certain I'd see you again," Rachel says. "I had faith in it. And here you are."

She looks much the same as she once did, though older than he remembers. It's been a very long time since he's seen her; twenty years, maybe, and she was still young then: sixteen, rail-thin and flat-chested. He remembers living in that cabin in the Adirondacks; he remembers that the plumbing always leaked, and he remembers his king-size bed at the back of the house, Rachel's mother puttering around the kitchen and how she used to hum little made-up songs to herself whenever the power went out.

He smiles at Rachel, very fondly, because he recalls all of it now, but mostly he remembers lying in that bed, and Rachel's bony body tucked up next to his, and her brother Peter on the other side, the boy a couple of years older but the both of them so alike they could've been twins, and their bodies were so slender and fresh and willing under his hands. 

At the time, he was a bit annoyed with the circumstances; things hadn't been going well, and that house had felt empty, in spite of the company in his bed. But now, looking back, those days seem softer-edged, and he can almost smell the traces of shampoo from Peter's hair, and the fabric-softener smell on the sheets.

"How is your family?" he asks her. He used to like to press a thumbs into Peter's hips, and whisper into Rachel's hair with words she couldn't understand, and their mother used to gasp out his name like it was a gospel song.

It was, of course. It was. Religious.

Rachel says, "Mother died a few years ago. Peter's in Canada now."

He says, "Hmm," and he would've said more, would've asked her whether her brother would come here, if she called. But he doesn't ask, because he looks at her, and she looks at him, and she says, "I've been *devoted*." She doesn't drop her eyes; she's trying to make him see the passion, the zeal, the fierceness of her love for him.

Her name is Biblical. It means 'ewe.' His fold is empty.

He stands up and says, "Come with me," and she does. She does, just like that, without asking any questions at all; she follows him out the door and down the street to where his van is parked at the curb, and when he tells her to get into the back she does, and when he drives away she doesn't make a sound.

He parks the van in a little lot behind an auto repair shop, and when he climbs into the back of the van she's already pulling off her shirt. She still doesn't have much in the way of breasts, and her skin has lost some of the softness of her youth, but she belongs to him and she is devout, and there is a welcoming softness between her thighs that feels like faith and power and home.

When he drives into her, she sobs, and her ragged breaths mutter "oh God, oh God." When she comes, her body tenses, twists and thrashes as if these are her dying throes. He holds her down with a hand around her throat, and he's aching hard and burning inside, but he doesn't come until her body goes limp.

She's one step removed from dead, her breath puffing shallowly against his cheek, and he's shuddering and twitching and still inside her. He whispers, "Yes, yes," like a mantra into her hair, but not in any language she'd understand, even if she were awake, and when he is coming and coming inside her he feels almost like a god.

He's in Seattle a few days later, and he has to wait for his coffee, elbow to elbow with the crowd at the counter. The woman next to him is reading a newspaper, very carefully with her arms tucked in and her head hunched down to read the orderly little lines of type. He glances over and he sees the photo on the front page; it's that face, the one he saw every day for nearly a year, the one he never wanted to see again, the one that makes his face flush even now with shame and rage and humiliation. It's that face that seduced and stole the better part of what he was, the face that's his and isn't at the same time. The picture is black and white newsprint, but the eyes burn and burn with something that used to be his.

The headline spells out the end of a cult; it's a punctuation mark, a period, thick black ink like an artist's signature to signal that the piece is finished, never to be touched again. 

He stares and stares at that picture, even when the girl at the counter hollers out, "Seth!" and slides his coffee cup onto the counter, toward the jostling crowd.

Seth is not here to retrieve his coffee. Seth is dead, somewhere just north of Seattle, and his followers are drifting back to their homes and soon no one will remember Seth's name, or his might, or his power.

He picks up his coffee cup, and doesn't really notice that the heat of it seeps through the cardboard cup and into his fingers. He just stands and blinks, frowns, trying to get his mind around the idea that his god is gone, but there's something about that idea that his brain simply refuses to process.

After all, the god left his body many years ago, but he still carries the echo of Setesh in every thought and breath; he carries the memory of it in his blood. His heart is Seth's heart; Seth's mind is still crouched at the base of his neck, and it still whispers secrets that only the gods could know.

Seth is life. Seth is happiness. Seth is almighty.

Seth takes a last look at the newspaper than turns to leave. He's thinking Canada might be a good place to begin again, and Rachel is waiting in the van.

the end


End file.
